


Hey Mister Deejay

by bomberqueen17



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Music, b-boy, dance, dance battle, hip-hop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden Ford's one personal item was a 40-GB iPod loaded up with the good stuff. One of his biggest regrets about the trip being one-way was that his music collection would get out of date. John Sheppard and a couple of the Marines collaborate to keep Atlantis's music library current, and John uses his wiles on the scientists to make sure the audio equipment is up to par. </p><p>This takes place concurrent with most of my other stories, including Thawing From The Inside and Salute The Flag, but this one has only the vaguest of implied slash and barely even has any cussing in it.<br/>It's John's POV, though-- Ford remains something of a closed book to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hey Mister Deejay

**Author's Note:**

> I wondered if the ‘jumpers had a sound system. And then I thought about Ford sitting next to Sheppard looking for turkey sandwiches on that first ‘jumper ride. And then I thought about how goddamn adorable Ford was, and the likelihood that he and Sheppard’s musical tastes would in any way overlap. And then I Googled the hell out of early-00s hip-hop, because you know, I can’t see Ford being super into classic rock. I used almost none of my research but my music library is much richer for it.

John wandered down the hallway near the impromptu barracks, limping a little. He didn’t come down this way much, but he liked to drop in on the Marines once in a while and make sure they weren’t causing Sgt. Bates too much trouble. He’d rolled his ankle offworld, and had spent most of the day icing it and catching up on paperwork. It was getting on time for dinner but he had time for a quick drop-in to see how everyone was keeping. 

He became aware of a strange repetitive noise as he drew closer, and slowed his pace as he listened in growing alarm. Suddenly he realized that it was music, and laughed at himself— was it really that long since he’d listened to recorded music? Maybe. He was closer now and recognized the song. James Brown. “Sex Machine”. He laughed out loud and turned the corner.

The hallway was full of people. There weren’t many good gathering areas on Atlantis; they’d not found anything to use as an amphitheater or basketball court or anything. This was a junction of hallways, with two converging stairwells and a largish open area. The Marines had dragged some couches out here and it wound up being a kind of lounge; the rooms most of them bunked in were down two of the hallways, and the mess hall was up a third one. 

People were sitting on the stairs, and the music was coming from the most jury-rigged impromptu semi-stereo set John had ever seen— it was largely electrical tape and exposed wire, fashioned out of odd components, held together cunningly and propped for maximum resonance in a section of metal wall paneling that had been beaten concave. Everyone John saw was military, no civilians or scientists. 

They were all watching someone on the floor— a skinny, dark-skinned man in the olive Marine PT shirt and sweatpants most of them wore off-duty (they’d packed as few civvies as John had), who was— was he writhing? Flailing? John belatedly realized that he was dancing. Breakdancing, even. He popped up to his feet and dove back down into a spin, white sneakers a blur as he spun on his head, dropped off easily, rolled over his shoulder, and froze suddenly in a difficult-looking bent-elbow handstand, just as the song ended. 

John joined in the applause as the man— Echavvaria, Private Echavvaria— bounced to his feet and, grin white in his dark face, walked over to the edge of the crowd. It was then that John noticed that Ford was sitting next to the speaker contraption, talking to another young Marine. He had something in his hand, and John realized it was an iPod. Oh. He was the d.j. 

The Marines closest to John on the steps fell silent and edged away. “Good afternoon, sir,” one of them said, and it was loud enough in the quiet as the applause died down that everyone heard, and heads throughout the stairwell swiveled. John felt very visible. 

“Hey,” he said. “Echavvaria, I didn’t know you b-boy.”

Echavvaria’s expression went from a closed, wary one to bright astonishment. That was the first test, passed, John knew; you call it “breakdancing” and they know you ain’t shit. 

“What you know about breakin’, sir?” Echavvaria asked, interest piqued.

John laughed. “Couple guys on my ground crew were super into it, back in, ah…” He scratched his head. “Moody, I think, when I was stationed there. They kept tryin’ to teach me and I never got any good. Ford, is that your iPod?”

“Yessir,” Ford said cheerfully. “Forty gigs of the good stuff, sir.”

“You are a smart cookie,” John said. “Have I told you that? You are.”

“You know any moves, sir?” another Marine asked. Diaz. A corporal. 

John shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “I can do the worm and maybe a [6-step](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6-step) if I’m drunk but that’s as far as I ever got.”

“Do it!” Diaz said, amused.

“Gimme six beers first,” John answered. 

“Aw,” Diaz said, and a couple of the others reacted similarly. 

John shook his head, holding out his hands. “I know it’s hard to believe,” he said, “but I’m really, really super white, and I dance like it. I never had any toprock moves at all and I sprained my wrist last time I tried a 6-step.”

“White guys can break,” Diaz said charitably. 

“I’m sure they can,” John said, “but I’m not one of the ones that can.” 

His radio had been crackling back and forth and he’d been ignoring it, already used to it— a couple of engineers having a desultory conversation as they tried to bring another hunk of the power grid online, but it suddenly blared in his ear, “Major Sheppard, come in?”

He rolled his eyes, tapped his earpiece, and said, “This is Sheppard.”

“Sir, we need you in the main power room,” one of the engineers said, sounding a little breathless. “There’s a device we seem to have initialized and it’s not responding to McKay’s input. We think it needs the real gene.”

“On my way,” he said, and tapped the earpiece off. “Hey, if y’all ever have a battle, lemme know, I promise I’m not a wet dishrag about stuff like this.”

“If I find six beers you’ll be among the first I call,” Diaz said with a grin. 

John grinned back at him, and waved as he limped off to the nearest transporter. 

 

The city didn’t blow up. John hopped up and sat on the counter, kicking his feet a little and watching McKay grumble as he put the console back together. “Hey,” he said, as McKay’s tirade wound down to a pause (there was never a stopping point), “how hard do you think it would be to get a sound system in the ‘jumper?”

McKay pulled his head out from under the console to blink up at him. “What?”

“How hard would it be to, like, hook up an iPod in one of the ‘jumpers?”

“I don’t know,” McKay said. “I don’t have an iPod. Do you?”

“Ford does,” John said. “His personal item was forty gigs worth of what he termed ‘the good stuff’.” 

McKay rolled his eyes and disappeared back under the console. “I have a feeling his definition of good is going to be very different from ours,” he said. “I’m not exactly eager to do a rather touchy rewiring job just to allow him to inflict his so-called music on the rest of us.”

“I dunno,” John said, gazing off into middle distance as he thought it over. “I got a feeling.”

“Yes well,” McKay said. “Let me see the contents of this iPod, and we’ll talk.”

 

 

It took John a little while, but when the team was enjoying an extra day of downtime due to McKay’s near-fatal allergic reaction on P2X-497, he managed to get Ford to relinquish the iPod for a little while. “I don’t know how to copy the files,” Ford had admitted. 

“I know someone who does,” John had answered. He didn’t have to say who.

Ford was hesitant, but he was a little leery of spending more time with McKay than he had to without John there as a buffer, so he handed it over. “That’s my most precious possession,” he’d said.

“Believe me,” John had assured him, “I know.”

McKay’s door slid open for him the second time he tried the chime. “What is it, Major?” Rodney asked, bathrobe-wrapped and sleep-wrinkled. 

“I got it,” John said, holding up the iPod.

“What?” McKay blinked. 

“You said to let you see the contents of this iPod,” John said. “And then we’d talk about maybe hooking it up to the ‘jumper.”

McKay blinked, and John saw the moment he remembered the conversation. His expression changed from baffled and annoyed to just annoyed. “Fine,” he said, and took the iPod from John’s hand with an impatient gesture, stalking back toward his desk.

“I, um,” John said, “thought maybe it’d be a good idea to copy the music files over to a hard drive. Since there’s almost no Earth music in this galaxy, it might be good to have at least a backup of what little there is.”

Rodney rolled his eyes. “If it’s not all crap.” But he took the cable from John’s hand, and obligingly plugged the thing in to his computer. He frowned, tapping at keys— he never seemed to have to use a mouse, and John had no idea how he did that, but he was crazy fast at it— and in a moment sat back fractionally. John pulled up the other chair and looked over his shoulder. 

“There,” Rodney said, “I’m copying it to a folder on the network. It’s called Earth Music. Which sounds like we’re a bunch of hippies, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” John said. The window Rodney had open was showing a list of the albums on the device. John whistled. “Hey,” he said, scanning the list, “that’s some good stuff in there.”

“I’ve never heard of any of it,” Rodney said. 

“This is what you’d call a well-curated collection, I think,” John said. “It’s mostly hip-hop, but— there ya go, there’s some classic rock too.”

“Hip-hop,” Rodney said, pronouncing it with eloquently disdainful over-precision.

“Don’t knock it,” John said, “there’s a lot of really good stuff in the genre. And Ford has most of it.” 

“Oh good,” Rodney said, scrolling, “he’s got the Tragically Hip.”

“You need like, a minimum percentage of Canadian content?” John asked. 

“No,” Rodney said absently, clicking, “but I really love _Fully Completely_ and am psyched to listen to it again. I can’t believe I left it off the hard drive of music I brought.”

“Wait a minute,” John said, “you have music too?”

“Of course,” Rodney said. He looked over. “Didn’t you load up your SGC-issued laptop’s hard drive with all your stuff?”

“I didn’t get issued a laptop until after we got here,” John said, annoyed. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. He shrugged. “I ripped every CD I could get my hands on to the hard drive before I even left for Antarctica.” He looked shifty for a second. “And copied every DVD I could fit.”

“Just how big was this hard drive?” John asked, as he parsed the shifty look. Ah, it was probably that most of the DVDs were porn. 

“Well,” Rodney said, “I _am_ a genius at compression algorithms.” He slid another glance sideways. “And I managed to get a giant hard drive put in my laptop, and snagged a couple of the spare ones that were being brought anyway.”

“Share the folder,” John said. 

“The music folder, yes,” Rodney said. Oh, the videos were definitely like 90% porn, from that tone. “I’ll put mine on the network, fine.”

“Could we get a hard drive full of music wired into the ‘jumper’s system?” John asked. “Because that would be even sweeter. Then we could let you and Ford fight over who got to play their music.”

Rodney looked thoughtful. “Well,” he said, “I guess I owe you a favor, since you saved my life. And some of Ford’s music is okay after all.”

 

 

John came by Ford’s room right before the next mission. Ford opened the door, still buttoning his BDU blouse, and blinked at John. John held out the iPod and its cable. “Thank you,” John said. “Rodney copied the files to a folder on the network. He called it Earth Music, and then he put his folder of music in there too. He said your taste wasn’t all bad and was really glad you had the Tragically Hip’s _Fully Completely_ on there.”

“It’s a solid album,” Ford said. 

“So he said,” John said. “He was impressed with your eclectic tastes. I was impressed by what a solid collection it is.”

“My cousin’s a D.J.,” Ford said. “My whole family is super into music. I got to help her DJ a couple of gigs. It was so incredibly cool.”

“I’m working on getting McKay to put a sound system in at least one of the ‘jumpers,” John said. “We’ll see if he will.”

Ford grinned. “That’d be so cool,” he said. 

“Yeah,” John said, “it would.”

 

 

If asking nice didn’t work, and asking mean didn’t work, John had found that leaning suggestively on the edge of Rodney’s worktable often did the trick. Sometimes Rodney’s eyes lingered strangely on John’s body, or mouth, or hands; John wasn’t discounting the possibility that the scientist might be sexually attracted to him, but he wasn’t bothered by it either. And it might just be that Rodney was easily distracted. 

John’s leaning today was to wear Rodney down about making a better speaker for the Marines’ hallway-lounge-area loudspeaker. They’d gotten it set up so they could use a laptop instead of Ford’s iPod to provide the music, but John knew Ford still mostly DJ’d whenever they got up to anything. Ford was no dancer, but he had the best music collection of any of them, and knew what to play for the different styles of dancing. They also had stopped freezing up whenever John showed up. He’d practiced surreptitiously in the gym until he remembered how the 6-step went, and finally one of the times Diaz needled him, he dropped down and did it flawlessly, to uproarious applause. 

Since then the Marines had been a lot friendlier— most of them, anyway. At least, most of the ones who were into hip-hop, and the ones who were into being entertained, which included just about all of them. Bates and some of his cronies were a bit standoffish, seeming to disapprove, but John figured that was more for appearances than anything else. Bates had actually taken to almost-smiling at him in the mess hall sometimes, and he thought it was related.

 “C’mon,” John said to Rodney, at what he gauged was a correctly-annoying interval. “It’d be _so_ great for morale.”

“Since when do I care about the morale of your people?” Rodney asked. 

“Since when does he care about the morale of _any_ people?” Simpson put in. 

Rodney glared at her, then rolled his eyes over to give John a nasty look. “You’re not endearing yourself to me,” he said. 

John sighed, tilting his head. “Since when do I have to endear myself to you?” he asked. “I’ve saved your life like twelve times. Surely I’m allowed to call in a favor.”

“Saving my life is your _job_ , soldier boy,” McKay said. 

“What is it that you’re trying to get him to do?” Simpson asked, frowning. 

John favored her with a particularly sweet version of his sincere smile. “It’s a pretty simple favor, really. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of electronics could do it. I mean, the Marines did a passable job on their own. But it breaks a lot and then they get sad. And nobody likes to see sad Marines.”

“I don’t like to see sad Marines,” Simpson said. “What is it?”

“They have a speaker set up in that big hallway area near where most of them bunk,” John said. “And they hook up Ford’s iPod, or one of the laptops with the network folder of shared music, and then they have dance competitions. But their speaker is made out of coathangers and electrical tape. I think one of the mechanics did it, and he didn’t have access to very good spare parts. You guys have better stuff than that.”

“Dance competitions,” Simpson said blankly. She snickered. “Really?”

“Yeah,” John said. “There are a couple good b-boys, a couple guys who can pop and lock, one chick who has some pretty crazy moves.”

Simpson and McKay both looked blank, but behind John someone made a strangled, high-pitched breathless noise. “I don’t know what any of that is,” Simpson said. 

“B-boys,” a soft feminine voice said, and John turned to see one of the scientists he didn’t know, a little Asian woman, standing with her hands clasped to her chest. “I break too!”

“Do you know anything about wiring?” John asked.

“Yes,” she said, “of course I do.” She had a soft accent, though her English was flawless.

“Perfect,” John said. 

“I will make them a speaker,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, which John estimated was about five-two. “And then I will win the next battle. When is it?”

John laughed. “Lt. Ford is probably your contact,” he said. “He DJs the battles. I bet the guys’d be down for as soon as you can get that speaker working.”

The woman grinned. “I am busy for the next few hours,” she said, “but you tell your b-boys that Dr. Jaewoo Park is coming to rock their world and kick their asses once she finishes dinner.”

“Sweet,” John said, and pushed off the desk, grinning to himself at the way McKay’s shocked stare followed him out. It was always pretty awesome to take Rodney down a peg.

 

 

After that it was easy to convince Rodney to fix up the ‘jumpers with a sound system. Rodney loved being needed, and if John got too cozy with the other scientists McKay would get oddly biddable. His worst fear was probably being upstaged in John’s affections. It was sort of creepy, their relationship, if you considered it too closely. So John didn’t.

“You can do the honors,” McKay said magnanimously to Ford. “The interface is there in the copilot’s chair. It’s just a little LCD display, not a whole computer— I tied it in to use one of the ones already there.”

There hadn’t been any preamble, so Ford didn’t know McKay was talking about the sound system, but he was a pretty sharp guy and caught on immediately as he sat down and looked at it. “Oh hell yes,” Ford said, looking up bright-eyed and grinning, with that smile he had that you couldn’t help but smile along with. Ford scrolled through the interface, his grin at about a million candlepower.

John finished his preflight, which he’d mostly done before the others showed up, and took the jumper down to the gate. By the time they were out the other side, Ford shot him a gleeful look and punched the button one more time. 

John threw his head back and laughed: Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice”. 

Ford was surprised when John knew all the words. 

 

 

 

 

“I just gotta run a little errand,” John said as the puddlejumper’s ramp opened and the rest of the team prepared to move out. “Go on ahead and get the supplies ready, and I’ll be back in about twenty minutes to help load up.”

Rodney stopped, looking back at him. “What kind of errand?” 

John didn’t look at him, busy fiddling with the controls as if that were even necessary. “Just, just a personal one,” he said. 

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly. “Oh,” he said, “just a personal errand, no big deal.”

John finally looked at him. “Rodney,” he said. “What do you care?”

“It’s just weird, is all,” Rodney said. 

“It wasn’t worth requisitioning a ‘jumper and filing a flight plan and explaining myself to Elizabeth and maybe getting referred to Heightmayer,” John said, visibly uncomfortable. Teyla had led the others out, and Rodney had a moment to think that she probably knew what this was about, and that only made him more annoyed. 

So he stared relentlessly at John for another long moment. “Fine,” John said, “come along, why don’t you?”

“I will,” Rodney said, a little huffily, and settled into the copilot’s seat. 

John closed the ramp and took the ‘jumper back to the ‘gate. He punched in an address Rodney didn’t recognize, though it was familiar. As they came out the other side, Rodney blinked in astonishment. “Wait,” he said, “is this—“

“Yeah,” John said. “Ford’s planet.”

“Is he here?” Rodney asked. “Did any of them make it out?”

John shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. 

“Then what’s this about?” Rodney demanded. 

John didn’t answer, concentrating unnecessarily on piloting the ‘jumper toward the cave complex. “You know,” he said finally, “you didn’t have to come along.”

“You’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” Rodney asked. 

“No,” John said. He set the ‘jumper down right by the entrance to the cave complex, clipped his P90 onto the front of his vest, and pulled a small box out of the rack above the bench seats in the rear compartment.

“What’s that?” Rodney asked. 

John gave him a long look. Finally he relented, face softening, and set the box down on the bench. He opened it. Inside was an iPod, one of the new flashy ones with a huge hard drive. “I’m leaving it here for Ford,” John said. 

“That’s not his old one,” Rodney said as John snapped the box— it was one of the waterproof ones— shut. The outside of the box had a label on it, that read “Aiden”. 

“No,” John said. He lowered the rear hatch and stepped out, carrying the box. He pulled a life signs detector out of his vest and handed it to Rodney. “Make yourself useful.”

“Fine,” Rodney said, and checked the screen. Nobody home. They went into the cave, and John stood a moment, shining the P90’s flashlight around the dusty, abandoned interior. Nobody had been here since the Atlanteans had cleared the place out after the whole thing had gone down. “You think he’ll come back here, if he’s alive?”

“I don’t know,” John said, moving deeper into the cave. Rodney checked the LSD again. 

“So it’s a new iPod,” Rodney prompted. 

“Yeah,” John said. Rodney waited, but no more was forthcoming. 

“His old one wouldn’t do,” Rodney tried again. 

“Nope,” John said. He went into the space that had been Ford’s quarters, and put the box down on what had been Ford’s bed. “Not big enough,” John said finally, standing still a moment, arms crossed over his P90. 

“It was big enough when he brought it,” Rodney said. 

“I know,” John said, and turned to face Rodney. “He complained to me, that first year, that he’d worked so hard at curating that music collection, and if we didn’t make contact with Earth again it would fall out of date. So I have one of my Marines working on it for me. His brother’s a DJ in New York and hears all the new music. He weeds out the crap, and sends me the good stuff, every time we have a supply run. I’ve been keeping it updated for when we get Ford back.”

“And now you don’t think we’ll get Ford back?” Rodney asked. 

John twitched. “Of course we will,” he said. “But in the meantime, this’ll tide him over, and let him know we didn’t forget.” He turned away, bringing the P90’s flashlight to bear on the doorway. “C’mon, we can’t stay, we gotta get back and load up.”

Rodney hung back a moment, looking at the little box. “Right,” he said finally, and followed John back to the ‘jumper.


End file.
